The other day (by which I mean a month ago when I first put this in my drafts), my creative writing professor made an excellent point about how difficult it is to feel the impact of a story if you're only engaging with it in excerpts, because I am fully desensitized to reading "Jem? My Jem?" and "the precise blue of his eyes" and "the cord snapped" and "if there was no one on earth who cared for you, did you really exist at all?" out in the wild, but I guarantee you when I get to these points in my annual reread of TID I *will* be bawling my eyes out.
Was somebody supposed to tell me the Catholic Church had a hymn dedicated to the Virgin Mary titled "Hey, Queen" or was I supposed to translate that myself while one of the music professors sang it at an academic award ceremony.
Rating WI Gubernatorial Candidates (As of when I first drafted this back in November)
WARNING: The author is incredibly biased in favor of Francesca Hong and is mortal enemies with one Thomas P. Tiffany.
(All quotes are copied directly from article linked below)
Toxic Tom
"U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is seen as the frontrunner on the GOP side, was not present."
Ah...Tom Tiffany. Truly the deadbeat dad of Wisconsin politicians.
(-∞/10)
Josh Shoemann
"Schoemann, meanwhile, said he was concerned about how AI could be a threat to the state’s workforce. He noted that Washington County has studied the potential impacts of AI, finding that many jobs could be automated using AI in the next 15 years or so."
Huh...I agree with him...
"Schoemann said "affordability" is the greatest threat and expressed concerns about young people and retirees leaving the state to live elsewhere."
A Republican who actually understands the economic issues facing their constituents? Maybe this guy isn't so bad after all!
"He said the state should work to deregulate industry and lower utility rates and cut taxes to address the threat."
Nevermind...
"He said Washington County was able to make progress using American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding, though he didn’t necessarily support the funding."
tldr; County Executive doesn't support the existence of the funding that improved his county's internet access.
(2/10; and that's probably more than he deserves. Please don't make this man Governor)
David Crowley, Kelda Roys, and Missy Hughes
"'There’s an opportunity for us to really become AI and a data hub not only for the entire country, but for the entire globe and really sets us apart in making sure that we continue to invest in businesses and companies here,' Crowley said."
Ew...
"Roys said that 'data centers are coming whether people like it or not'"
Also ew...
"'Trying to regulate it at this moment could potentially hold back some of the benefits that we might see from it. I think that we need to continue to watch it,' Hughes said."
Triple ew! Please stop making me agree with the Republican!
(4/10 for all of them, and that's being generous)
The Queen Herself
"'Legalize weed.'"
Have I mentioned I love Francesca Hong?
"'The revenue that comes in [from legalizing weed] will be able to invest in fiber optic and high-speed internet in many different companies across the state,' Hong said."
You mean if we elect her we could get weed, better internet, and stick it to the prison industrial complex? I can't wait for August, take me to the poles now!
"'We have to make sure that people have food, and so, I think working with an administration that has no interest in your constituents is going to be incredibly difficult to be able to ensure that there is an economy that works for everyone,' Hong said."
"I'm gonna struggle working with a President who doesn't care about my constituents" should be everyone's answer.
(100/10; my soul needs her to win)
Sara Rodriguez
"'Gov. Pritzker thanks us all the time for the amount of tax Wisconsin [consumers pay],' Rodriguez said."
Not gonna lie, this was really funny, and not just because my dad had just pointed out that every state surrounding Wisconsin already has legal marijuana, so having it banned here really is just driving revenue to other states.
(7/10; a passing grade)
Kelda Roys again
"'I’m all for legalizing weed, and abortion for that matter,' Roys said."
Please Note: Abortion is already legal in Wisconsin.
(Still 4/10)
Please read this article yourself and do further research on the candidates and their platforms. Never take anything at face value and always interrogate what deeper message could be behind a piece of media.
Candidates are competing to replace Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who won’t seek reelection, in the first open governor’s race in 15 years.
fuck ai because some ai checkers flag my writing as ai generated since they were trained off of my writing style and my friends writing styles and the people who inspired me styles since we all upload our work to the internet for people to enjoy freely and are now being punished for that but you will have to pry the em dash out of my cold dead hands 🫶
Taking a class on sublime aesthetics this semester and last week our assigned reading was Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful and part 4 section 16 can basically be summarized as "The dark is scary, but sometimes the light is *also* scary." and I'm like...Yeah man...I've seen a Stephen Spielberg movie.
One of my favorite information theory things is parallel construction.
Let's say you have a piece of information, but either you're not allowed to have that information, or you don't want to reveal your sources. Well, sometimes you can just say "I'm not telling you" and that works. But in certain circumstances, you can instead produce an alternate explanation for how you might have gotten this information, now that you have it.
So, let's say that you're a private detective in possession of mind-reading abilities, but you don't want people to know that you have mind-reading abilities. This means that you can't act on what you seeing when mind-reading ... except that you can engage in parallel construction. If you're trying to catch a cheating spouse, you read the mind in order to know when and where to be, and then everyone will just assume that you were doing a normal tail and stakeout. There's no reason to suspect you of being a mind-reader.
It's a really interesting problem, trying to construct a plausible way that you could have obtained this information, and it gets harder depending on what the parameters are. Are you trying for a fig leaf? Or does it need to be rock solid, standing up to scrutiny?
This is one of the things the Allies had to think about after the Enigma code was broken. If they acted without any obvious reason to act, they'd be found out, so they would e.g. send out a scout plane to spot a ship whose location they already knew. That way the Axis would report being spotted by a plane, and it would just seem like luck.
This is also one of the things that's done by our pervasive surveillance state. NSA intercepts point DEA (or whomever) in the right direction, then they do a "random" traffic stop or "anonymous tip" as justification. The defendant and their attorney don't ever find out the real origins of case. Which is, in my opinion, less fun than the Enigma example.
yall gotta learn the difference between "this character is an asshole" and "this character was supposed to be super cool but the author is an asshole" and "this character is a teenage girl who was mean once"
"Ending explained" video for Herman Melville's Moby-Dick that initially appears to be doing something with the luciferan symbolism surrounding Captain Ahab, but by the two-thirds mark it's clear it's gradually circling in on an argument that Ishmael's improbable survival of the penultimate chapter proves he was secretly working for the whale.
Don't have a picture because I ate it all, but my dad made bacon the other day and decided to use the drippings to fry up some tofu, and it's really delicious, but also kinda funny to use bacon grease to cook the stereotypical vegetarian/vegan dish.
